• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Name five Congressmen from the Bush Era.

    Name five Congressmen from the Reagan Era.

    Name five Congressmen from the Nixon Era.

    These people won’t be remembered at all. They’re chaff in the wind. Nobody outside of some bespoke politics nerds will bemoan Paul Ryan or Bill Frist or Tip O’Neal or Mike Mansfield for their successes or failures of the political moment.

    In another forty years we’ll remember Trump in the same way we remember James Polk or Calvin Coolidge or Harry Truman, as an artifact of history that wins praise or scorn in cloistered corners of the ideological landscape based on the hagiographies written by modern shills and propagandists. But the middle-management Congress that facilitated/obstructed their rein? Barely a byline in the history books.

    • Xanza@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      Name five Congressmen from the Bush Era.

      Name five Congressmen from the Reagan Era.

      Name five Congressmen from the Nixon Era.

      You could honestly name 5 current congressman and run a decent chance of being right… /s

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      Individually they won’t be remembered at all. Collectively they will be remembered as the fascists who ruined the USA, just like we remember their counterparts in 1930s Germany as Nazis.

      • theneverfox@pawb.social
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        2 days ago

        I don’t think of Congress under Nixon when I think about Watergate. I don’t think they’ve even crossed my mind until just now, even collectively

    • atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      One the one hand I get what you are saying. On the other hand people absolutely remember Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell. Republicans who were counter to Democratic presidents.

      I would hazard a guess that people like Henry Kissinger, Ollie North, and Arthur Laffer won’t be forgotten any time soon either.

    • dukeofdummies@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      This is why I’m of the opinion that we should refer to everyone in the legislative branch by state. Names should only be necessary for campaigning for the primary and the general. Sure, put their name in the title bar at the bottom of the screen as they speak, but the media should just refer to all politicians by their state of origin.

      hear me out

      We have almost 600 people in power in the legislative branch. 100 in the senate and 435 in the house. My home state has 10 Politicians in this branch, Georgia has 16, California has 54 . Most people struggle with 10 names at a party lasting 4 hours. Good luck trying to keep track of all of them on, unless you are a political science major, a purely casual basis. We will only be able to keep track of 3 to 5 politicians that just… truly suck. A few that we really like, and the rest… let’s just be real here, do god knows what.

      You can do a lot of damage being hidden and convoluted, and I don’t think it’s unfair to simplify it by grouping politicians by state. If a Georgia politician does not want to be grouped with Marjorie Taylor Greene then they need to provide ammunition to get them ousted in the next election cycle. If they don’t then they’re part of the problem. This also drags all of the state into things. If I don’t like Tom Emmer, I sigh and move on about my day. If I find Minnesota did something dumb, then I get cranky. Oh wow, this is the guy in my district, or my neighbor’s district? I had no idea. I want this guy out!

      What’s more, it incentivizes cooperation and competition at a state level, and begins to break up the more monolithic federal level of the parties. Federally, it’s easier to pace the unpopular positions to be pushed by people with 4 years left in office, and hope the heat cools down three years later. If the entire state gets dragged into unpopular positions, it makes them much harder to push.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        I think there are a lot of cute ideas to reframe the optics around any given megalomaniac in a Senate Seat. This is good. Making them wear their sponsors on a jacket while on the chamber floor would be another one. I’m also very partial to the Original First Amendment, which failed back in 1789, with the intent of guaranteeing one House Seat per 30,000 residents. Now a house district can be as large as 600,000.

        But so much of our struggle is bound up in the privatization of mass media and the consolidation of ownership and decommissioning of so many regional offices and bureaus. The coverage of individual candidates is stacked by a handful of kleptocrats. And the airwaves are swamped with misinformation 24/7/365 as it stands, only hitting a hysterical pitch in the weeks before the election.

        As it stands, I don’t think we really benefit from “The Representative From Texas” and “The Representative from California” getting generic obnoxious headlines, as the hate between people in this states is already so intense and so artificial as to make it redundant.

    • wirebeads@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      I hope to remember Trump as someone who was murdered with love by the American people to protect their democracy from fascism, nazis, and empire expansion (and collapse) in order to show Americans and the world that they won’t stand up for this.

      My guess though is that we’ll all remember Trump as a rapist and he’ll have a trauma centre named after him once’s he’s gone.

      “The Trump grab em by the oussy sexual assault and healing center”

    • Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 days ago

      I was gonna make a list starting with McConnell Grassley and Schumer, but Nixon was a long time ago, so they don’t cover all at the same time. Point received.

  • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    Oh, as if people will remember shit. A lot of voters apparently forgot that they’d already had Trump for president. The shocked-Pikachu faces have been beyond bizarre this time around.

  • GraniteM@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    You know how people remember how the fecklessness of the Weimar Republic is what allowed Nazism to take over? They’ll be remembered like that. And by “they,” I kind of collectively mean nearly all of us.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    They won’t be remembered for nothing. They’ll be the new monsters in the history books for generations to come, if we still have generations left after fucking around so hard.

  • zewm@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    This is the digital version of I’m leaving a yelp review. Absolutely useless.

  • Shardikprime@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Reign of terror?

    So, how many people have been publicly executed for being Dems?

    Spill it guy, how many?

  • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    100% Democrats fault, yet people want to blame Republicans.

    Edit: Guys, I forgot that some of the blame belongs with the Democrats’ “…Aquarian cowards and sycophants who belligerently asked a nation to support a genocide instead of demanding the Democratic candidate actually adopt an electable position.”

    • BassTurd@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Blaming the Democrats because Republicans are doing facist things… Bold take. Why not blame the people committing the atrocities?

    • NotLemming@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      I wouldn’t go that far, but you do have a point. But you aren’t saying WHY they supported a genocide. Who lobbied both sides for that? And now is best buddies with trump and they’re going to have a Riviera and everything else.

      • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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        2 days ago

        If we blame Trump or Bibi, we’re shifting blame away from our greatest enemy - moderates.

        • NotLemming@lemm.ee
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          1 day ago

          I blame dems for not having a backbone and morals. They could’ve lost respectfully and told the truth. Imagine if they exposed the lobbyists for what they are before the world, exposed the US backed genocide. But no, they took the cash and lost anyway and there will be a new Riviera they helped create.

          • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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            1 day ago

            If anyone was wondering what opinion my original comment was parodying, it’s this one here.

            • NotLemming@lemm.ee
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              1 day ago

              Haha same! I love making fun of people who don’t realise and continue to be genuine towards me. Bullying is such fun and makes me feel great about myself!

    • Doorbook@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Both are to blame along with many millions of people who fail to create a three party system to balance power, or push for more democratic government where opposition can block legislation, or even making sure executive orders are limited by law in scope to not be abused.